"Eric Schmidt, executive Chairman of Alphabet and former CEO of Google, delivered the keynote speech at the CIO Thought Leadership Forum on Cybersecurity on Monday. In his talk, he brought up a vital question he always poses to businesses. “I always ask, ‘How do you know your data’s secure?’ There’s never a good answer, which is why I like asking it,” he said. “It gets the fear response going.”

Schmidt said encryption is critical to keeping businesses safe. Google encrypts information while it’s in transit and while it’s at rest with 2048-bit keys -- for the non-techies, the basic general principle is the bigger the bit, the better the encryption. The company moved to 2048-bit keys in 2013 amid public outrage over the National Surveillance Agency’s surveillance practices. “I can tell you today if you have something that needs to be secure, your best place to keep it is in Gmail,” he said. “It’s attacked all day and [hackers] don’t get in. It’s certainly far more secure than anything you’re going to find in the U.S. government.”